English is full of figures of speech popularized by Shakespeare. Some of those terms Shakespeare’s interest in falconry.
“Hold onto Lima,” Healy-Rennison commanded, as I tightly pinched the speckle-feathered bird’s jesses, or tethers, under my thumb. “Now she’s ‘under your thumb’,” Healy-Rennison explained with a smile. “Quite literally,” I replied, amused to learn the etymology of a phrase that I’ve used for most of my life. Only now I was standing in the place where the phrase was born – in the wet green woods of the Anglo-Irish gentry, with a giant hawk on my wrist, her jesses wrapped around my little finger. “Yet another phrase we get from falconry.” —BBC – Travel
Post was last modified on 23 Dec 2021 2:54 pm
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No, I didn't. Did you like it?
Most of it, yes. The descriptions of the hawk, and the bits weaving in TH White's experiences, were very well done. The more solipsistic waffle, not so much. Definitely worth a read.
Did you read H is for Hawk?